'63 Boycott wins Audience Award for Best Documentary Short at PAFF!

February 23, 2018
2:29 pm

'63 Boycott, a film by Rachel Dickson, Tracye A. Matthews, and Gordon Quinn took home the Audience Award for Best Documentary Short at the Pan African Film + Arts Festival this past week following its LA premiere at the fest on Thursday, February 15!

The film made its New York City premiere the following Monday, February 19 at The Museum of Modern Art's 2018 Documentary Fortnight.

’63 Boycott: Documentary short reveals the cyclical nature of racism and resistance through protest, using archival and contemporary footage

About '63 Boycott
On October 22, 1963, more than 250,000 students boycotted the Chicago Public Schools to protest racial segregation. Many marched through the city calling for the resignation of School Superintendent Benjamin Willis, who placed trailers, dubbed ‘Willis Wagons,’ on playgrounds and parking lots of overcrowded black schools rather than let them enroll in nearby white schools. Combining unseen archival 16mm footage of the march shot by Kartemquin founder Gordon Quinn with the participants’ reflections today, ’63 Boycott connects the forgotten story of one of the largest northern civil rights demonstrations to contemporary issues around race, education, school closings, and youth activism.

The film had its world premiere to a sold-out crowd at the 2017 Chicago International Film Festival, followed by a screening at the Virginia Film Festival attended by director Gordon Quinn and its European Premiere in Paris at the Université Paris Diderot's colloquium entitled "The Black Metropolis, Between Past and Future: Race, Urban Planning, and Afro-American Culture in Chicago," attended by Rachel Dickson, Tracye A. Matthews and Gordon Quinn.

“A film every Chicagoan should see.”
— Scott Pfeiffer and Jacob Oller, Chicagoist.com

“With footage shot a half-century earlier as a college student, director Gordon Quinn planned the boycott documentary for its 50th year. He missed the anniversary date. But with co-producers Rachel Dickson and Tracye A. Matthews, he reimagined it as a 30-minute short doc, and produced one packed full of facts.”
— Robin Washington, The Chicago Sun-Times

“On the one hand, a half hour is probably the right length for a documentary about a one-day event...On the other hand, I would have been happy to have had more of ‘63 BOYCOTT...While the 1963 boycott did not achieve its specific demands, it is clear from the recollections of multiple participants that it sparked something, including a desire to achieve personal educational goals, a long-term interest in community activism and school improvement, and an awareness of injustices that weren’t just happening in another part of the country.”
— Mark Walsh, Education Week

“‘63 BOYCOTT is a timely look backward as the U.S. public education system stands vulnerably in the crosshairs of public officials who seem determined to destroy it.”
— Marilyn Ferdinand, FerdyOnFilms.com